Used Masks and Gloves that Litter Streets and Parking Lots Could Be a Health Hazard, Officials Warn

De Blasio added that people should dispose of them in order to not “endanger anyone else.”

“You don’t know if, God forbid, you happen to contract this disease, but if you’re on that mask, getting your breath on it, or those gloves, you’ve sneezed on them, anything like that, you don’t know,” he said. “Get rid of them. Get them out of the way so they won’t, in away way, endanger anyone else.”

A police captain in Londonderry, New Hampshire, told the Union Leader newspaper that citizens had reported on social media about a high number of littered masks and gloves in their community, in places like grocery store parking lots.

“These stores are already taxed with being busy, and now they have to have staff diverted to cleaning the parking lots to make sure they’re clean and sanitary,” said the officer. “It’s creating more work and potentially putting them at risk.”

Waste experts noted to CNN that the masks and gloves should not be recycled either, even if they are made of plastic.

“We recommend people throw their PPE in the trash,” a spokesperson for Orange County, Calif., waste and recycling told the outlet. “We don’t want to have children or unsuspecting healthy adults to come in contact and become carriers of the infection.”

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